Thursday, September 19, 2013

I'm very relieved/excited/nervous/hungry/thirsty/horny/sleepy/poor/yougettheidea-y to finally be announcing a proper launch event for this proper album of mine. We're going to release this damn PRODUCT out into the wild!

The event and album are the culmination of months of work and refinement, throwing out ideas and starting again from the ground up, and discovering new life and vitality in my older material. I've collaborated with fellow spoken word artist JACKY T, to produce some great music, and conned my old friends ALEX SCOTT, MEAGHAN BELL and of course STEVE SMART into re-recording the old poems with me.

I'm looking forward to trying out the poems live with the new sound-scapes as backing, and throwing in a few surprises.

As well as Steve and Alex, joining us on the night are my friend VAN ROBERTS (aka Little Raven) and as our host/MC the magnificent AMY BODOSSIAN. So please come along and join us:

We had a great time at the John Curtin doing the last Sweetalkers event upstairs there, and even a midst fringe and a generally heavy poetry schedule of events, I've tried to pick a day that doesn't conflict with any other events.

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For those who can't get to the event, the album is also now available online, using PayPal. Just send $17.00 (AUD) to 'randallstephenspoetry@gmail.com' ($15 for the CD + 2 bucks postage), just make sure to include your postal address too!

There will be online version available for sale soon as well, through Bandcamp.com, hopefully by the time you read this. -Peace

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Disclaimer: Randall Stephens actually had a really good time at Queensland Poetry Festival 2013.Disclaimer:This is a bunch of tweets I punched out during/around the weekend in question, strung together here to masquerade as some kind of report, pretending to be a poem.Disclaimer:Poetry sucks. yeah even when it’s good, poetry sucks. And you fucking know it.

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FRIDAY NIGHT

30 seconds of failed hobnobbing at the opening
and I already want to punch myself.
Haven't changed clothes, shaved,
or brushed my teeth in nearly three days and not wearing underwear.
Came to Brisbane to scurry beneath it and pick my nose in drier air.
And that's all.

Update:
Pi-O and I sneered at each other. Free wine. I'm good. Scrotum.

Update:
I HAVE SOLD ALL THE CDS I BROUGHT WITH ME. TOTAL SELL-OUT. RANDALL HAS THE GOOD FEELING.

Update:
we talk into the mirror at the bathroom stalls,
he tells me in drunken confidence that I’m swimming with sharks
nodding,
wondering which side of the net we are on right now
and as best I can

I try washing my hands.

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SATURDAY

No hoodie, no undies
No toiletry bag.
Time to go shopping.

Update:
Buying cheap/non-descript clothes,
under somewhat emergency circumstances,
while on the road,
makes one feel a little like a fugitive.

Cool.

Update:
I miss my girlfriend.
I also just missed the bus
which means I'll also miss CJ Bowerbird’s feature( at Queensland Poetry Festival)
times like this I miss
knowing my way around
miss my wonderful bike

Yep, lotta miss
not alotta hit so far today.

Update:
Got me what I need from the local junk store
Thrown into the bargain,
I also went and found a quiet public toilet to jerk off in
I tell myself
this is not so much to blow off steam
And more for nostalgia's stake

But it does blow off steam.

Update:
He speaks so carefully
not wanting us to miss a single word
a painfully slow driver

making me want to reach for an overtaking lane, early.

Update:
Inconsistent in tone, pacing and character. A badly produced incoherent mess of ingredients that never jelled into anything memorable, at once poorly structured, and entirely predictable in reaching its ultimately unsatisfying conclusion,

Update:
Yeah nah, fairly safe to say as a rule:
anyone stating they want to 'unpack' something you said/wrote
doesn't have your best interests at heart,

and should probably be stabbed with a rake as soon as possible.

Update:
Hours of poetry today. ...so much profundity and erudition.
Head heavy.
Think I need to go eye-spy girls in hot pants and eat me a hot dog.

Update:
think it is simultaneously wonderful
yet kind of hideous that one can procure,
fairly easily now,
such a thing as a vegan hot dog.

Travel wank as follows:
In Brisbane,
talking to my friend from Perth
a person I met in Bundaberg comes up to us
I talk about how my film won a prize here 2 years ago
couldn’t be here to accept it then
because I was in Thailand.

Punch yourself Randall, punch yourself now, you deserve it.

Update:
sound poetry ...enough said
(apparently)

Yeah fuck you too Sound Poetry

Update:
I talk only in bitch
can talk to people here, only in bitch.
I’m fluent in it to the exclusion of all else
have my phrasebook of injuries done to me by bigwigs here
Let me tell you about the time Pi-O was a cunt
about how I once got along with Eleanor Jackson
or something dumb about Shane Koyczan

outside
both of us fighting
twinned and dawning realisations
about one another
sometimes you're wrong
about being wrong about people
sometimes
so my old friend and I argue
I say
he says

all the wrong things

Update:
a lesson that life keeps trying to teach me
over and over again
just look out for yourself
said before and often: I’m a slow learner
but when it comes to this lesson: I skip the classes,
I talk through the lectures
I flip off the teacher

Some things it seems, I will never learn
This thing I know, I don't want to learn.

Update:
She tells me why he was shaky on the stage
The booze needed to get him out of the hotel room
the nerves that eat you
between empty seats and spotlights

maybe I should stop making fun of people who don’t want to be applauded

Update:
Jennifer Compton is walking around like a Muslim women
mouth covered like it’s shameful
we saw it silver screen size with Ian's mouth, and Anna Fern's
last night... oh last night
but we don’t blame here for the atrocity of that film,
and I also want to tell Jen
it’s that fucking beret she should be apologizing for
But she’s a mate, touring buddy

and I done enough damage this weekend.

'sides, it does look good on her
I just hate berets on principal
...y'know?

Update:
Feeling about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit
I decide to risk stinking up the slam with a non-slam poem before I leave

Update:
I stink up the place
smells like pride and a ticket too many
Holes punched

Update:
The festival is not over, but is for me
train pulls me away
glued to the window

the best lines of poetry
I'll ever have rise up and pop out of existence
like bubbles in my beer glass
as I stare out of movement out there

maybe that's the real parallax here,
with so much of us given over to (status)
the best if ourselves is never

should never, be so freely shared

______________________________CODA

Things are going to be fine in Syria.
Tony Abbott will not get elected.
The next Star Trek will have fresh and original ideas.
My new boss will better than my old boss.
The moustache fad will end.